Town and Country Plaza

When Sebastian Spering Kresge opened his first store in 1899, his products sold for 5 and 10 cents.

His stores, which evolved into what we know as Kmart in 1962, have long maintained a reputation for low prices.

We’re seeing that tenfold as the chain’s only Sarasota store prepares to close.

Prices haven’t quite hit 5 and 10 cents at the Kmart in Town and Country Plaza at the intersection of Fruitville and Beneva roads, but the liquidation sale has slashed the stock to as much as 85 percent off.

In its final weeks, the department store has become a wasteland of unwanted merchandise, bare clothing racks and empty shopping aisles. An employee there told me the Kmart was busy when the sale first hit, but as the variety of products has dwindled, so have the crowds. The two Kmarts in Manatee County, at 7350 Manatee Ave. W. and 6126 U.S. 301, continue to operate normally.

The signs at Sarasota’s Town and Country Plaza Kmart late Tuesday afternoon said the sale would last six more days. That number should be five by the time you read this column Wednesday.

The store still had a collection of mismatched toiletries with just a few recognizable brands. Racks of jeans were marked down to $4 a pair. Toys and gift wrap had been reduced to 60 and 40 percent off, respectively. There were large quantities of things such as EasyBake Ovens, space heaters and child-sized plush chairs but little that shoppers really need.

The bulk of the food and cleaning products had left the store with the hordes, and last-one-standing items like a Hillary Clinton Chia Pet for $11.99 and a Spiderman garden rake for $2.39 made Kmart feel more like a garage sale than a department store.

This kind of liquidation is nothing new for Kmart. The chain did its first round of more than 200 store closings in 1995, and that was well before the e-commerce boom.

It’s easy to blame online sales and e-commerce giant Amazon.com for many of brick-and-mortar retail’s problems, but Kmart’s troubles go back two decades. Macy’s, which is shutting 100 of its own stores this year, was speeding ahead in the mid-90s while Kmart was groping for footing.

The chain lost another 72 stores in 2000, and then the retailer filed for bankruptcy in 2003, resulting in the loss of 600 more stores. On Wednesday, shares of the parent company of Kmart and Sears were down nearly 15 percent after Sears Holding Corp. indicated that hedge fund CEO Edward Lampert is losing its fight to the company afloat.

Millions of dollars have been funneled through Lampert’s hedge fund, ESL Investments, to keep Sears going. But with sales fading, it is burning through cash. Lampert combined Sears and Kmart in 2005, about two years after he helped bring Kmart out of bankruptcy.

The holding company cited its efforts to cut costs, sell property and assets like its Crafstman tools brand, tap new funding sources and make other moves to stanch the flow of red ink. But it reported a $2.2 billion loss for last year and said it had to use money from its investments and financing activities to fund operations.

I’ve heard commercial real estate experts and developers talk about the Kmart’s remaining stores about as fondly as they’d speak about a plague.

They’re not strong anchors, and they haven’t been for a long time.

Town and Country Plaza, which is in part owned by North Miami-based Gator Sarasota LLC, will be left with a single anchor, a Bealls, when the Kmart there closes its doors for good.

Sweetbay Supermarket left the plaza in 2013. That space, which is now owned by a subsidiary of Manatee County-based Benderson Development Co., still hasn’t been filled. Strings of inline tenants have left over the years, and neither owner has announced plans for reviving the plazas.

To be honest, though, the shopping centers other Kmarts call home in Bradenton and Ellenton aren’t anything to brag about, either.

Maybe now that Kmart is packing its bags at Town and Country Plaza, it’ll take whatever plague it has with it.

And, hopefully, we won’t be staring at the gaping retail hole there much longer.